24/09/2009 Purchased House + Contents Insurance with Barclays. Their claims process is a nightmare - its been delegated to call centres around the UK manned by Gresham (the old Norwich Union) Every barrier is put in your way to avoid paying out on a legitimate claim.

08/02/2009 Had a Life insurance policy with them including critical life cover. My wife got cancer and they refused to pay due to her seeing her GP for a pulled muscle and neck pain, that the specialists say isnt related, taking them to court but dont the the hassle

04/10/2008 The site was easy to use and the home insurance link was obvious. The small print about who and what they cover was prominent at the top of the site, which made it easy to see whether they'd cover me. Weirdly, they required me to create a password, which seemed unnecessary just to get a quote. They offer a first time buyers deal, which provides initial cover of up to £20,000, plus a discount on some products and services for the home. I chose their standard deal for up to £50,000. Even with their £20 cashback offer, their quote was more than I'd had elsewhere, so I'm not using them.

30/07/2008 Got a mortgage with them so thought I might get a good deal on home insurance (that's what their ad intimated anyway!) Found their online quote system didn't really work properly so I ended up ringing. Waste of time considering the amount of questions they asked me to 'tailor' my insurance - only to come back with a price twice that of any other insurer I've ever been with.

04/06/2008 One of the only main providers I could find which did student insurance. Was able to pay monthly and it didn't cost any extra which was a major bonus as most others I found charged a fair bit extra or you had to pay all up front. Got to see the whole policy right on the first page which saved messing about later on. They also broke this up so you could easily access the exact bit you wanted i.e. what's covered, who would be covered etc. They also offered loads of choices about how much would be covered rather and the single article limit of 500 is quite high. Main drawback was that adding on cover for computer equipment massively raised the quote, even if only the lowest value was selected.

26/05/2008 I found this quite a difficult site to use - too much information flashing up and rather distracting. The form they require to be completed before you receive a quote is quite long and has irrelevant details, again I find this off-putting as you then receive follow up phone calls trying to sell you a particular product that you may not want. Unlike the rest of the sites I've been on today, when I ran into problems I didn't have to spend time hunting down a support phone number, it was clearly marked next to the form itself.

14/05/2008 Hugely expensive car insurance! Would cost more per year than my little car is worth and nearly double my current policy; and that includes a discount for buying online! They charge for monthly instalments for car insurance but not contents insurance? Strange. Easy and quick to fill form; and cover is thoroughly explained during quote process.